Taking advantage of the fact that the excellent and the original OxDox documentary festival is having a sabbatical, two new events have appeared in 2006. The Oxford International Film Festival, which took place in May, seemed to rather opportunist affair that exploit Oxford as a venue rather than engaging with the wider community. Now comes BritDoc, which has been sponsored by Nokia and will be centred on Keble College from next Wednesday to Friday.

This is also a pretty exclusive event, which divides its programme between delegate and public screenings. But at least this is a festival with an agenda and so has much in common with OxDox. Let's hope that it becomes an institution and that the city can become Britain's documentary film capital.

BritDoc's intention is to establish a top-line event which will not only showcase the best actualities from around the world but will provide UK documentarists with an annual forum to exchange ideas and experiences.

This is a highly laudable aim. But in its current format it smacks more of a conference than a festival as Oxford residents will only have access to open-air screenings in the University Parks of Marilyn Agrelo's charming Mad Hot Ballroom and Paul Crowder and John Dower's New York Cosmos study, Once in a Lifetime.

Surely some sort of arrangement could have been made with one of our cinemas to show some of the other pictures being presented to the industry insiders, especially as some of them are excellent and one, Blue Blood, has an Oxford setting that would have attracted a bumper audience.

Directed by Stevan Riley, Blue Blood follows a group of hopefuls who join the Oxford University Amateur Boxing Club to be selected for the annual bout against Cambridge. The novices are a mixed bunch a failed rugby player determined to secure a Blue, an astrophysics graduate with a USAF background and a passion for skydiving, a biochemist fresher struggling with his coursework, a philosophising Oxford Union hack who detests violence, and an ungainly chorister who rarely finishes what he starts.

Coaching these unlikely lads is Des, a builder with 170 fights under his belt and a genuine fascination with what drives these well-set young gentlemen to put themselves through a punishing training schedule in order to take on eight Cantab counterparts in Oxford Town Hall in front of a baying crowd.

The various trials and tribulations make for compelling docusoap viewing, with the Town vs Gown match and a sobering night at Sandhurst standing out before the Varsity showdown.

Equally riveting, but for much more harrowing reasons, is Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's A Lion in the House. This is agonising whether it's focussing on the battles of five delightful kids to beat cancer or the confusion and courage of their families or the compassion of the staff at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

But, while it recounts some undeniably moving and inspiring stories, this intimate documentary over-relies on the human interest angle and misses a socio-medical aspect that would put these harrowing case histories into a wider context.

Having endured the nightmare with their own daughter, Bognar and Reichert capture six years of emotional shifts with admirable sensitivity. Yet there are moments when the unflinching camera feels intrusive and the mood occasionally switches uncomfortably from Frederick Wiseman-like detachment to reality TV manipulation. But, ultimately, this is a film that demands an effective response, not critical analysis.

Personal experience also colours Doug Block's disconcerting 51 Birch Street, in which he uncovers his parents's secret past while clearing the family home, following his eightysomething father's shock remarriage.

Alternating between home movies, interviews and his mother's diaries, Block slowly uncovers the frustrations that prompted a seemingly contented homemaker's growing resentment of her mild-mannered husband and her eventual crush on her psychiatrist and passionate affair with an unnamed neighbour.

Yet he fails to elicit whether his father was simultaneously cheating with the secretary he has now wedded after an apparent 30-year estrangement. Something of a domestic detective story, this will leave everyone harbouring suspicions about their own nearest and dearest.

There are numerous other intriguing documentaries on the delegates' roster, including Dollan Cannell's conspiracy expos, 638 Ways to Kill Castro, and the latest from established directors Chris Petit Unrequited Love and Ben Hopkins's 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep.

There are also a couple of offbeat musical efforts on show Milivoj Ilic's study of a Balkan brass band contest, Guca, and Alexandra Lipsitz's Air Guitar Nation, which follows a line-up of imaginary axemen as they prepare for the world Air Guitar championships in Finland.

But we will end with Ashim Ahluwalia's John and Jane, which should prove enlightening to anyone suffering from the call-centre blues. It's impossible not to sympathise with the young Indians, who endure long shifts and unsociable hours to cold-call clients in the US. But what leaves the deepest impression is the conglomerate ethos that condones the exploitation of these graduates hoping to make a little money.

BritDoc takes place from from July 26 to 28. For details visit www.britdoc.org/festival